


Cross-Cut

by paintedwolf



Series: Sub Rosa [4]
Category: Charmed (TV 1998)
Genre: Angst, Chris is not dealing at all, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Piper appears but has like 1 line of dialogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:01:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26872600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintedwolf/pseuds/paintedwolf
Summary: Tag to "Chris-Crossed".When he crash lands on the attic floor, it doesn't hit him straight away.Chris in the immediate aftermath of his disastrous trip Back to the Future.
Series: Sub Rosa [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1638253
Comments: 6
Kudos: 30





	Cross-Cut

**Author's Note:**

> Alright. So, after a short and sudden flash of inspiration, I'm back with a little more angsty Chris (which is apparently the only Chris I write).  
> Like the last one, I've slotted this into the correct chronological spot in the series, because it'll keep me up at night if I don't.

He thought about Bianca all the time. When he lay wide awake some nights on his couch at P3, staring at the ceiling, he would pretend she was lying next to him like she did in the future, when they'd talk about what things would be like once he'd saved Wyatt: all the stuff they always wished they could do but had never been able to; where they'd get married, what kind of house they'd live in. She had wanted a cat. 

She'd had so much faith in him back then, often more than he'd had in himself. He tried not to think about how he was pretty much the only thing she had to have faith in. 

Sometimes, he talked to her. He'd imagine what she'd say while he thought through plans like they once did together for hours and hours each day, during the many months they’d spent planning every detail of his trip to the past. 

When he was particularly exhausted, he would complain about _them_ – the sisters and Leo. _You'd never believe what they said today_ , or, _If Leo would get off my ass for five seconds..._ , and how they never listened to him, never seemed to be able to understand just how important this all was. It was kind of pointless, and maybe a little pathetic, but there was no one else he could talk to, and it drowned out the monotony of the silent arguments inside his head, chasing his thoughts round in endless circles until he wanted to scream.

He had wished so many times the past few months that Bianca was with him, even if just to stave off the loneliness that had slowly been creeping up on him the longer he was there. He was far too used to working alone – preferring it, even – instead of alongside most other people, even those, few as they were, that he trusted with his life. But choosing to be alone, he was quickly beginning to understand, was a much different thing than being alone because there was no other option. He wondered, in his deeper moments of weakness, whether it would have really been that much harder to bring her with him. 

But it had been difficult enough to insinuate himself into the past as the Charmed Ones’ whitelighter, which meant his only course of action, had she accompanied him, would have been to keep her a secret, away from the day-to-day interaction with the sisters and Leo. Away from pretty much anything that directly involved the Charmed Ones and their former whitelighter, simply because there wasn’t an ounce of doubt in Chris’ mind that they would’ve trusted Bianca even less than they did him, and that was saying something.

Besides, he was nothing if not practical, and he needed Bianca in the future, to keep Wyatt one step behind them for as long as possible. There was little more she could offer in the past that he wasn’t already doing – other than her skills as a spy and assassin – and his emotional needs could never outweigh the importance of her keeping things together while he was gone.

In all his hopes and wishes to see her again, he had never quite expected it to turn out like this.

-||-

Nothing.

For a while after it happened, that was all he felt. Or didn’t feel. He wasn’t sure if it was a complete cessation of emotion, or if the only things he _was_ feeling were several shades of numb and blank.

Chris supposes it’s all just semantics in the end, but from the moment he crash-landed on the attic floor, it was as if the swirling vortex that had hurled him back into the past had punched a hole right through him, leaving a gaping black void where the small part of his heart that _hadn’t_ already been crushed had once been. 

It’s enough for him to hold it together during his barely-there explanation of what happened in the future, not quite enough for him to feel the relief he surely should when Leo and the girls accept his excuse for why he can’t tell them more than he has, but it keeps his voice steady while he reassures them that Bianca’s no longer a threat. 

Phoebe says she’s sorry. He doesn’t know how much more they know, or how much they figured out while he was out of it, but she does sound genuine when she says it. It’s the closest Chris comes to breaking, and he has to take a breath before he can speak again.

 _Me too_ , he says, and he is. He’s sorry for so many things. God, he’s so, _so_ sorry, for all of it. 

The rush of emotion he keeps expecting never comes. There's no anger, no sadness, only more of the same, muted _nothing_. He feels dead inside, and yet, there’s somehow still hope in his voice when he asks them if they’re alright with him sticking around a while longer, probably because he can't imagine what he'll do if they say no. Leo is the one who answers him, the one who tells him he can trust them too. Who says that Chris can come to them if he's in trouble, but the words are weighed down by so many broken, hollow promises and Chris wants to believe him, needs _so badly_ for something to hold on to, that he says okay even when it isn't. 

He makes a promise that night. 

Looks into the innocent eyes of the child he knows will become a monster one day, and swears he will save him, or stop him if he can't. It’s the same promise he’s made for years, to himself, and to the version of Piper who only ever knew Wyatt when he was good. 

The Wyatt who was kind and funny even if there was always something odd in his eyes that Chris hadn’t been able to figure out until it was too late. 

The stop him part has always been an addendum to _save him_ , a last resort if nothing else works. He doesn’t care that people thought his brother was gone for good, that he _couldn’t_ be saved, not even when Wyatt himself laughed at the notion that he needed saving in the first place.

Chris can’t– has never been able to let go and forget an entire childhood of being brothers, or believe that Wyatt’s destiny was always to be evil. 

Maybe that no longer means anything to Wyatt. Maybe Chris really is as stuck as Wyatt says he is, not in good versus evil, but in his heart versus everything else that wants to prove him wrong. 

They had been best friends, once. Wyatt had loved him; Chris knows he did.

He still isn’t ready to give up on that. Maybe he never will be, but as Chris stands in that doorway, the only thing he’s sure of is that, one way or another, this has to end before anyone else gets hurt.

It doesn’t all catch up to him until much later.

By the time he gets back to the club, his head is fuzzy and he can’t quite see straight anymore.

Between Bianca draining his powers, losing them completely, getting them back, Wyatt tossing him around the attic like a ragdoll, and two trips through time, he barely has the energy left to take off his shoes, much less process everything that’s happened. 

His shaking fingers fumble with the laces, and when he finally gets the sneakers off his feet, he’s beyond caring about anything other than sleep. He tips to the side, bringing his knees in towards his chest, and doesn’t bother thinking about how uncomfortable he’ll be leaving on the jeans and button-down he’s wearing for the rest of the night because he’s out seconds after his head hits the pillow.

The world is on fire. 

Flames surround him, licking at his feet, sending up plumes of thick, black smoke that make his eyes water. The heat is intense, rippling the air in the distance, and Chris covers his face, coughing into his elbow while he searches through blurry vision for some way out. 

Above the roar of the inferno, he hears the steady drip, drip of liquid and staggers, almost blind, towards it. He reaches out, and something hits the back of his hand, but it’s not water. 

A small, red-black rivulet of blood runs down over his knuckles before plopping onto the ground, and as Chris watches, it expands outward, forming the shape of a phoenix. He steps back when the blood pools at the toe of his shoe, and stumbles into a body behind him. In sheer terror, he turns, slipping in the blood, and when he looks up from the floor, it’s into Bianca’s red-smeared face. 

_I don’t need you_ , she says, and it’s Wyatt’s snarling voice that comes out from behind her bared teeth. 

Chris tries to speak, but the smoke is too thick, searing in his throat, and he can’t take a deep enough breath to make a sound. There isn’t enough air, there isn’t–

He wakes up choking, streaks of cold sliding down the sides of his face. He tugs at the collar of his shirt, trying to peel the fabric away from his skin; he’s too hot, his chest is burning. 

He can’t breathe properly. 

There are no physical marks left on his body other than a few bruises. No more angry wound across his chest, never was a real hand closed around his throat. Chris knows that. 

Doesn’t stop him from feeling it, like Wyatt’s invisible fingers squeezing, digging phantom fingernails into his heart, into his lungs.

His breath shudders, and he turns back onto his side, body folding in on itself. The waistband of his jeans digs into his hips, and one of his hands is still twisted in his shirt, but Chris doesn’t move, can’t do anything but lie there as his little gasps of air turn into silent sobs. 

He doesn’t know how long it takes until it stops, only that he comes back to himself sometime later when his ribs no longer feel like they're crushing his insides. His face is cold and sticky, and his eyes ache from more than just exhaustion.

When he straightens his legs his knees throb. He has to shake out his right hand, wincing a little at the tingling of renewed blood flow to his numb fingers. 

All in all, he feels like shit. 

Looks like it too, when he rolls off the couch and stumbles to the little bathroom in the corner of his room and peers blearily into the mirror above the sink. The ring is still in his pocket, probably imprinted on his thigh by now. 

He digs it out. The metal is warm against the pads of his fingers. There's a tiny smear of rust-red across the stone, and Chris' jaw trembles. It makes a low clinking sound when his hand hits the edge of the sink, covering over the hitch in his throat. He squeezes his eyes shut, remembering the sound when he tossed it - when he _threw it away_ \- on that coffee table. It hadn’t only been a promise of a life together, it had been the promise of a _better_ life, for them and everyone else. And now...

Chris shakes his head and leans down to wash his face. The cool water feels good on his still too-warm skin. 

It’s not lost yet, that dream. He’s still here, still has a chance to make things right. It’s why they risked everything to get him here; it’s what Bianca died for, in the end. 

He only wishes it hadn’t cost them so much.

With a deep sigh, he unbuttons his shirt, vaguely nudging it into a corner out of the way with his foot once he pulls it off, then does the same with his jeans. 

When he collapses back onto the couch, he’s more comfortable, and probably way more tired, but this time, he doesn’t fall asleep straight away. For a long while, he lies on his stomach, with the ring still clutched in his fist and one hand brushing the rough carpet, not really thinking or feeling anything. 

The next few days pass by in a blur. Once he’s pulled himself together some and compiled his latest list of demons to vanquish, he orbs into the Manor ready to go, or at least, ready to get the Charmed Ones to go, only for Piper to tell him Phoebe and Paige have moved out, somehow, in the day or so since he'd last been there. Clearly having been preparing herself for this exact occurrence, Piper immediately launches into an explanation about why they're doing it, stuff about her not wanting to feel like they're giving up their chances at being happy, and there's a small, spiteful part of Chris that wants to remind her that Bianca gave up her life for _their_ chance at being happy, and that takes all the fight right out of him. 

Piper narrows her eyes at him when he doesn't argue, and he can almost see the moment her expression starts to soften, and nope, no way is he ready for that, so he makes a show of rolling his eyes in exasperation and starts going back down his list, looking for demons he and Piper can take down by themselves. 

There aren't very many, but then, Chris hadn't been accounting for being two Charmed Ones short. They can make a start, at least, but there are some he's absolutely not going to give way on, so they'll just have to work around getting Paige and Phoebe here when they need them. 

"Fine," he says eventually. "But this doesn't mean they're getting out of things altogether. We've still got a lot of work to do."

"Yes, sir," Piper says, sarcastic military salute heavily implied as she rips the list out of his hands to examine it herself. "Let's get to it." 

They vanquish demons. Piper complains about it half-heartedly, but she keeps insisting they don't need Phoebe and Paige to help, and he wonders if she needs this as much as he does. Mostly, it's only the two of them, a pair of souls searching out white noise to fill the silence. 

Or maybe that's just him. They don't talk about it. 

He still thinks about Bianca all the time. 

He doesn't talk to her anymore. He can't. Not when he knows he's speaking only to a ghost, when every thought of her is tainted with that look on her face as she’d spent her last breaths pushing him to continue with their mission. As if she weren’t lying there, broken and bloody because of him, as if it wasn’t entirely his fault. 

He keeps going because it’s all he can do. Focus on fighting, scratch names off his list, clean the dirt and sweat from his face, and start all over again in the morning. 

Hold onto his promises, and the people he's made them to, and swear every day he'll keep them because he's not going to let her, or any of them, die in vain.


End file.
